♨ Nº155 Swing into Spring 🌷⛅

ok, ok, spring is officially still a month out but we feel the season changing already at the Twotone office with with more & more sunny days here in Amsterdam. Not to mention a blossoming agenda of tradeshows, product launches, rides & a number of other exciting newsworthy updates coming up in the hopper.

Recently, we realized that we didn’t see a proper list of bike shows in Europe anywhere, so Frank made one:

Be a part of product testing ahead of the market launch later this year.

This is an exclusive possibility to collaborate with an innovative brand on the final product fine-tuning and market introduction. The company is looking for open-minded gravel enthusiasts from various backgrounds and riding styles to document their riding, provide product feedback, discuss gravel topics within the ISPO Open Innovation community and represent the brand during photo/video shoots and industry events. Selected riders are going to interact directly with the product development team to co-create their definition of a new product category.

Three selected riders will be invited to the company headquarters twice (to pick up the bike and for an additional content production) as well as the press launch.

No details on the bike nor the brand will be disclosed to the public ahead of the press launch, but the company behind the project has a strong reputation for innovation.

To become one of the happy testers, you’ll have to apply on the ISPO Open Innovation project site and fill out a questionnaire there.

The application phase will run from 13th of February to 3rd of March 2019.

Even in case you are not being selected, you might still be invited to a closed forum discussion group (in which the brand will get revealed) to discuss gravel topics with the brand representatives directly.

Dutch startup Swapfiets has global ambitions – it wants every city to have its blue-tired transportation bicycles. But they’re not for sale. Instead, customers pay a monthly subscription fee, which guarantees an always working bike.

A couple of months ago, I set out to answer the question of whether it’s possible to avoid the tech giants. Over the course of five weeks, I blocked Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple one at a time, to find out how to live in the modern age without each one.